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#HistFicThursdays - Art as Inspiration

 Last year, the Historical Writers Forum published an anthology of stories which had been inspired by pieces of artwork. I take a particular pride in this anthology - not only because it is a fabulous collection of stories which mine is included in, but also because I helped to come up with the theme. In amongst the pages of Masterworks , you will find stories inspired by painting and sculptures, and one which was inspired by a carving. I wrote a blog on this little carving when the book came out last November (which you can find here !), but it got me thinking about other examples of artwork as an inspiration... As historical fiction writers, art is not only an inspiration, it is also a valuable tool. Through art, we can get an idea of what people looked like (very handy if you are writing about a real figure from history) and it can also be very handy for events and settings. One of my favourite continuous portrayals of an event is the example of Frost Fairs. These start from their n
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Literacy Lesson Plans

As well as running the Crowvus Book Blog, I'm a primary school teacher. Although I love my job, this means that I haven't posted on as many book reviews as I would like. A lot of my 'spare' time is taken up with reading 9 year old children's writing, not published works.

But I thought it would be a good idea to merge my two interests and include some lesson plans on this blog.

These lesson plans will include writing and reading activities, along with some class novel suggestions. I have also just started teaching grammar (the cover teacher taught it until this week!) so I might post some ideas for this as well.

I am a Primary 4 teacher so the lesson plans will be targeted to that age group, but they could be adapted to meet the relevant stage of the curriculum.

Class Novels

"First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts" Expressive Arts

"Children of Green Knowe" Technology

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